Author: Big Cal

Weekly Wrestling Roundup Episode 70

*note: had to mess around with lighting and grain removal in After Effects, so the quality isn’t as good as normal*


Big Cal Presents: Wrestling View – Royal Rumble Special – Video & Written Review

 

WV Royal Rumble Match Full:

 

2013 Royal Rumble Review
Match 1 – Alberto Del Rio Vs The Big Show. Del Rio won the WHC in a Last Man Standing Match. So the rematch is a Last Man Standing Match. Yeah ok. Del Rio is now the greatest thing of all time. That’s how WWE are making him out to be, anyway. Just so they can have another big Mexican star since Rey is borderline retired and Sin Cara sucks. I like how they build up Show’s knockout punch as being a move that can end the match at ANY TIME… so why doesn’t Show try to hit it from the get go? Low blow spot is pretty awesome, Show sells it like a man. That’s been hit in the crotch. That chokeslam through the table spot looked TERRIBLE. Was like Show couldn’t be arsed. Oh look yet another Barricade spot. Do they do this thing bi-monthly now? I’m sure this is the third time we’ve seen it since TLC. The spot at least helps build to the finish. Show is hurting, Del Rio gets the chance to injure Show’s arm, then while applying the arm breaker, Ricardo ties Show’s feet to the ropes with DUCT TAPE. Totally ripping off Cena/Batista lol. Show can’t escape because his arm hurts too much, which I liked. Del Rio wins. I enjoyed the finish, but everything before kinda sucked. Was slow and dull with only a couple of moments worth mentioning. *1/2.
Match 2 – Team Hell No Vs Team Rhodes Scholars – Tag titles time. How many times have we seen this match now? Add in singles matches between the two teams, and 6 mans on SD… urgh. I like all 4 guys, but they just don’t have THAT kind of chemistry. Doesn’t help that Rhodes Scholars can’t work a control segment to save their lives. They just kinda stop the opponent, tag out, stop, tag out, work in a couple of tag attempts, then hot tag and finish. That’s all we get here. Nothing worth seeing whatsoever. Commentary is AWESOME though. Nothing to do with the match lol, they are just insulting each other and having fun. *.
Match 3 – 30 Man Royal Rumble Match – #1 is Dolph of course, and #2? Chris Jericho! Total surprise for me, no idea if it leaked or not before hand because I am EXTRA careful about spoilers for the RR. Kofi Kingston is the HUMAN YO-YO. A shit nickname for a shit wrestler. Cody tossed 6 guys in the RR match last year. Santino comes it and throws everyone over the ropes, thinks he got them all over… but nope. They surround him so he gets his snake out… and pokes some people with it before being chopped, superkicked and eliminated. Fine comedy spot for the RR match. GOLDUST. What a pop for him! Awesome. Hope he stays around and finally gets that match with Cody. Needs to happen. Guy still looks great in the ring. Superstars has sucked for a while now, needs a grizzled old veteran to give people their best matches to date. Finlay just seems to be an agent now, throw him on Superstars too. A weekly Finlay and Goldust match, even on Superstars, would make me MARK THE FUCK OUT. Goldust stays in for a little while, then Cody eliminates him and he takes a great bump into the ring post. Definitely needs to be a match between them, Dustin will put his brother over like FUCK. LOL at Jericho sat waiting for a 619, even looking back to see where the fuck Rey was. Kofi gets thrown out, but lands on Tensai’s back and ends up on the announce table. Looks like he was supposed to jump to the ring apron… but probably wouldn’t have made it so he gets a chair and hops his way back… only to be eliminated straight away by Cody. AWESOME. Darren Young looks like he hurt his leg when he went over. He won’t be missed if he’s injured though. THE GODFATHER! Aaaand he’s gone straight away. LOL. Poor Rey, he really doesn’t have a good showing this year. Barrett of all people eliminate him too. He really should retire at WM this year. He was awesome for a decade in WWE, but he just hasn’t been the same since he last return. Bryan looks awesome when he enters. God he’s so fucking over too. I HOPE he gets a nice big push after he and Kane split. Speaking of, Kane comes in, Bryan eliminates him, then Bryan gets thrown out and Kane kidna catches him. They have an awkward moment, Bryan tells him to put him back in, Kane drops him instead lol. SEEDS PLANTED FOR BREAK UP. More on Raw the next night too. Probably end up with a blow off match at WM, but I really wish it would happen sooner so they (mainly Bryan) could so something more at WM. BO DALLAS HAS LASTED OVER 10 MINUTES SO FAR. And he’s made less of an impact than Santino did in 2009. BO DALLAS ELIMINATES WADE BARRETT. That made my night. Barrett fucking sucks and deserves to be eliminated by an NXT jobber. He also loses clean to Bo the next night on Raw. Awesome shit. Ziggler superkicks Jericho out. Jericho had a great performance, but ZIGGLER is the guy that fucking RULED this match. Wish he was at least the final guy to be thrown out. Instead the final 2 are Cena and Ryback. At least Cena won, he’s the least shitty option out of those two. Not happy still. Overall, a fun Rumble. Not the greatest, but I enjoyed it all the way through. ***1/4.

 

Match 4 – CM Punk Vs The Rock – Jericho had a GREAT performance in the RR match despite being gone for 6 months. He lasted nearly 50 minutes. Rock cuts a (shit) promo prior to his match and HE’S ALREADY BREATHING HEAVY. Not a good sign lol. Rock keeps trying to use the Spanish announce table. Punk keeps putting the cover back on it. HE’S A REAL HERO TO THE MEXICANS. When Rock does get to use it, the table breaks before Rock can hit a Rock Bottom and it looks to hurt Rock more than Punk. LOL. Heyman hits Rock from behind and I’m positive he screams “MOMMY!” when Rock turns around and goes after him. Plenty of support for PUNK, even against the self proclaimed great one. Smart stuff from Punk going after the mid section since THE SHIELD attacked him on SD and hit the triple powerbomb and Rock was bleeding internally. Punk hits a couple of high risk moves, and he plays up on the fact he recently had knee surgery, a nice little touch, and Rock at least does a nice job of attacking it when he gets the chance. A couple of nice sequences, one ending with Punk locking the Anaconda Vice in, and the other with Rock applying a Sharpshooter. After that, the match really begins to go downhill. Table spot is fucked up, Rock is about to his the single worst elbow in the world… lights go out, Shield attack Rock and it’s all done in a super shitty way. Punk wins, which was awesome, but with time left I knew something was going down. Vince restarts the match, random People’s Elbow, Rock… wins. Just like that. Talk about an absolutely HORRIBLE way for the huge title reign of Punk to end. It was just so… flat. Dull. Boring. Uninspiring. Punk looked terrible, Rock looked terrible, nobody benefited from the title change. Just shitty booking. And thus ends Punk’s great reign, and we’ll be lucky if Rock has more than 2 matches now (EC and WM) for his reign. I get that business wise leading into WM, Rock as champ will draw, but only for this short time. Cena is probably gonna beat him for the title… and then what? Is Cena suddenly gonna spike the ratings and increase buyrates because he beat The Rock? Extremely doubtful. Cena winning or losing doesn’t change ANYTHING anymore. Punk losing to Rock here doesn’t help him. Rock losing to Cena isn’t going to do anything. Cena beating Rock isn’t going to do anything. This whole situation is POINTLESS. Match is ok up until the lights going out shit. Then it dies. And brings the rest of the match down. **1/2.

Royal Rumble 2013 – PREDICTIONS AND STUFF!

Decided against a video for this, since my voice isn’t back to normal just yet (watched  back WWR footage and decided to not record anything else lol).

Royal_Rumble_2013_Poster

As everyone should know by now, I LOVE THE ROYAL RUMBLE. I look forward to it every year more than even WM. So, let’s take a look at the card and I’ll make my predictions!

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WWE Title Match – CM Punk Vs The Rock

The feud hasn’t been anything spectacular (when you have one half of it making lame kiddie jokes, throwing out terrible catchphrases, and focusing too much on people like Vickie Guerrero and Paul Heyman, you really aren’t going to get something truly special), but Punk has killed it with his promos, making it easily 19878237636525247934.9876625 times better than Rock/Cena feud which had an entire year to be good. Punk is the fighting champion, holding on to the title for over 400 days, not even missing shows when he was injured and on crutches. Then The Rock shows up from Hollywood, randomly gets a title shot, then shits over a bunch of people who haven’t really done anything to him. Yet somehow PUNK is the heel and ROCK is the babyface. LOL. I’m rooting for Punk 100%. He is CLEARLY imo the babyface of this situation despite WWE making him run down the fans. Plus Punk is actually good, so yeah, I’m always gonna root for the BEST guy involved. Besides, would Rock as champion even work? Show up 2 or 3 times between now and WM? Because if I recall he has one of his terrible movies coming out around WM time and will be spending more of his time promoting THAT rather than promoting wrestling and WrestleMania. Not something you want in your CHAMPION. Besides, despite the fact I personally see no redeeming qualities in the guy, he IS a draw, and he WILL help draw for WM with out without the title. So why not let him help draw with a big match… AND have a WWE title match separate. Surly that would be better right?

So the match itself… well on paper it already looks to absolutely SHATTER the god awful stuff Rock has done since returning (the SS tag match and WM 28). Punk, while not truly being the “best in the world” is still REALLY FUCKING GOOD and if anyone can get a good match out of Rock, well he won’t top the list but he’s there no doubt. That being said, I’m going into this whole thing with very low expectations. That was (hopefully) I can’t be disappointed. If they put on a good match I’ll be happy. If they have a classic, I’ll be fucking ecstatic. If they suck, I’ll have kinda expected it.

Winner – Seems everyone is kinda settled on Rock winning. Not me. I said above why I didn’t think it would be a great idea, and honestly I just have that FEELING that Punk is leaving with the belt still. CM Punk is my pick!

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World Heavyweight Championship Last Man Standing Match – Alberto Del Rio Vs The Big Show

Sheamus had a great run as champion. Then he ran into Big Show. A great series of hard hitting matches, with Show gaining the WHC. Show looked good. Was having good matches. Then randomly Del Rio wins a LMS match on an episode of SMACKDOWN and is being pushed as the greatest thing to come out of Mexcio. Sorry, but Corona still holds that title. Oh and somehow Del Rio is now a face. This whole situation just sucks. Show was doing great, Del Rio was doing shitty… but WWE wanted a new Mexican star because Sin Cara is terrible and Rey is likely retiring very soon. Instead of building up to it, then threw the belt on Del Rio and basically screamed “HEY LOOK NEW MEXICAN HERO HE’S AWESOME EVERYONE CHEER FOR HIM” in our faces.

Most people seemed to really like their LMS match on SD… but I just wasn’t feeling it. And they are going from a LMS match… to a LMS match. Wow. Ok. CREATIVE. Being on PPV will hopefully help improve the quality of the match, but I’m still not expecting that much. Hope I’m surprised though.

Winner – Alberto Del Rio. As much as I’d love for Show to win back the title and dominate until WM, they aren’t going to randomly take the belt from Del Rio after this MEGAMEXICAN push he’s getting right now. Which is a shame.

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Tag Team Title Match – Team Hell No Vs Rhodes Scholars

Not really much of a feud here. One or two promos between the teams spread over what seems like a lifetime. They’ve wrestled each other on and off for months now. On PPV too as well I think?

Match has potential to be good given a decent amount of time. Rhodes Scholars can work over Bryan, Bryan gets a hot tag, nice finishing stretch, sorted. Basic STF (Southern Tag Formula) is all this needs to be. Bryan can make anything work.

Winners – I’m gonna say we will have NEW tag team champions. So Rhodes Scholars for the win. Team Hell No have had them for ages now, and I think it’s time they split. Not some big huge grudge match between them, but lose the belts and just kinda part ways, allowing Bryan to get back to awesome singles action, and Kane to float around doing what he does lol.

30 MAN ROYAL RUMBLE MATCH

The match I can’t wait to see! Who is gonna enter? Any surprises? When they gonna enter? Who will eliminate who? WHO IS GOING TO WIN? All these questions help make it my most anticipated match every single year. Even when the winner is obvious, the rest of the match is unpredictable so it makes up for that. Not really much else to say!

Winner – As much as I don’t want it to happen, I’m thinking Cena is winning. Hopefully Dolph at least lasts until the end (since he’s either #1 or #2, not that it makes any difference except WWE will promote winning from the #1 position like its the greatest achievement ever and not really mention the #2 winners much), and hopefully we get some surprises entrances, even just one time only deals.

Road to Royal Rumble – Royal Rumble Ramblings #25

2012 Royal Rumble

So apparently I never did a full review for this event last year. Looked up why, turns out I was on my way to Scotland hours afterwards for a funeral.

Match 1 – Daniel Bryan Vs Mark Henry Vs The Big Show – WHC inside a steel cage! Henry was just coming off his awesome 2011 run, but he’s dropped the title at TLC due to being injured. Yet still continued to wrestle for another 3 months or so. Show won the belt… then dropped it 45 seconds later to Daniel Bryan who cashed in Money in the Bank! Awesome. Bryan at this point was having some awesome character development, going from a pure babyface, to a heel who still thought he was a babyface. This was also the beginning of the AJ push. Match isn’t too long, since Henry is hurt after all, but I really like what they manage to do. Bryan takes turns in getting mauled by his bigger opponents, then occasionally Show and Henry would go at while. Finish is still really weird to me, with Show grabbing on to Daniel’s arm then he seemingly drops him and Bryan wins. Almost like a botch finish… except it wasn’t lol. Good stuff, but nothing amazing. Bryan/Henry cage match is the only cage bout you should check out from this feud, and then the singles Show/Henry matches too. **3/4.

Match 2 – The Bella Twins, Natalya & Beth Phoenix Vs Eve, Kelly Kelly, Tamina Snuka & Alicia Fox – NO.

Match 3 – John Cena Vs Kane – EMBRACE THE HATE. Or not. Cena will win anyway. Only good thing to come out of all this was Ryder getting destroyed on a weekly basis! Chokeslam through the stage, Tombstone, being pushed off the stage in his wheelchair LMFAO. Is there some sort of sick joke to be made about Cena and Kane doing a suffocation spot then countering into a crossface? There probably is, but I’ll refrain from doing it. Fuck me this was dull. Ends in a countout too. DUD.

Match 4 – Brodus Clay Vs Drew McIntyre – This is happening because. Yeah. I’m like 99% positive that Drew got “fired” a week or so ago by Teddy Long because he kept losing matches. Then he randomly shows up here. To get squashed by Brodus. At least he got past all this and now he’s doing something good. Oh wait, no. 3MB. Urgh. Way to waste one of the most talented guys on the roster, you fucktards. DUD.

Match 5 – CM Punk Vs Dolph Ziggler – WWE title on the line. The ENTIRE BUILDUP for this match was based around Punk and BIG JOHNNY, so Big Johnny was going to be the special referee. Then decided against it just before the match. So the entire build up went out the window. Awesome. SO we get some good stuff here because, well, Punk and Ziggler together always work nicely at the very least. However, there were some things I didn’t like. Mostly how Punk had Ziggler beat THREE TIMES while the referee is down and Big Johnny just stands on the outside and doesn’t attempt to make a call. Makes Ziggler look weak as shit… because he still ends up losing. If Ziggler got the title, then at least the being beat 3 times thing would have been perfect to focus on building up to a rematch. But as it was… it just made Ziggler look like a complete joke. Kinda like how Cena is doing with him now. Poor guy. Punk and Ziggler had better TV matches leading up to this match. **3/4.

Match 6 – 30 Man Royal Rumble Match – Rumble starts in the worst way ever with THE JIZ being #1. Alex Riley is #2. Things aren’t getting better lol. Match is dull for a while, then FOLEY shows up, followed by RICARDO who does Del Rio’s entrance only with some broken down old car which is amazing. Then Santino shows up and we get a battle of the sock puppets which makes me MARK OUT BRO. Then they get eliminated and it gets real fucking DULL again. All 3 commentators working the show enter because… fuck knows. Karma returns which was cool, but she doesn’t last long. ROAD DOGG shows up which is awesome. Love when Swagger comes in and chargers after everyone, knocking them down, but when he gets to Road Dogg, he just screams “woah!!” at him, so Swagger stops and leaves him alone. LOL. Gets dull again, then picks up with an awesome finishing stretch between Sheamus and Jericho as the final 2. Sheamus wins. Overall a boring as fuck match. Some fun surprises, but they don’t last very long. Finish makes up for a lot of the bad, but not by much. **3/4.